


dew point

by theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes



Series: states of matter [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Eating Disorders, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, mentions of past unhealthy eating habits, ocd (implied), oh look s2 introspection, some childhood reflection!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:47:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25224841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes/pseuds/theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes
Summary: Will sits in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and decides quietly (because of course no one believes him, they think he’s crazy (criminally insane!)) to take the carving knife to himself before Hannibal can get to him.Metaphorically, of course. Penance by starvation. Coffee on an empty belly, push around the rest to make it look as though he might’ve eaten. Plain mashed potatoes, half a cup of wilted vegetables, and a cut of dry meat.
Series: states of matter [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827493
Comments: 9
Kudos: 109





	dew point

**Author's Note:**

> well 
> 
> (please don't read this if you think it's going to trigger you)

Will sits in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, on a hard, small bed in a jumpsuit dull enough that it doesn’t hurt his eyes. The lights are electric and buzzing. There is a tray in front of him, picked over. 

He has not touched the meat. 

It’s funny what the people you trust can do to you. Betrayal comes in many different flavors- this one came in dinner parties, garnished prettily. (He can’t fight back the feeling that he should’ve known. How could he have known? It sticks in the back of his throat, bloody- it takes his appetite away, reminds him of what he has done. He should’ve known.)

Will sits in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He thinks about hunger strikes, about melting away fat and muscle from bone- he thinks about what kind of a meal he’d make, and what kind of meals he’s eaten, and how Hannibal Lecter had sat across from him at the dinner table and smiled, so calmly, all the while _knowing-_

Will sits in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and decides quietly (because of course no one believes him, they think he’s crazy (criminally insane!)) to take the carving knife to himself before Hannibal can get to him. 

Metaphorically, of course. Penance by starvation. Coffee on an empty belly, push around the rest to make it look as though he might’ve eaten. Plain mashed potatoes, half a cup of wilted vegetables, and a cut of dry meat. 

His ribs ache, satisfyingly. 

-

Prison is boring, Abigail's dead. Her ear was in his stomach. Therefore, he won’t eat. 

It makes sense to him, as much as anything. Things have been clearer since he woke up from his coma, and things have been confusing. Either way he sits, and either way he starves. 

He has never been a big man, really. It is perversely gratifying to shrink. He circles his fingers around his wrists like manacles, as if he doesn’t have enough.

-

They say you are what you eat, which means he _was_ human, and now he’s nothing. Or he was human, and now he’s stale coffee- or he was human and he’ll be the feeding tube Chilton keeps threatening to stuff down his throat, if that counts. 

Jack still needs his help on cases, of course. Alana visits as a sort of cautionary self-check- _you were friends with this crazy once! Not even you are perfect!_ Hannibal gloats, subtly. Not often. Chilton does too. It’s monotonous. 

Will has a good imagination, and so he turns himself inside out slowly and painfully and totally. He peels himself like fruit. Does that make him crazy? He thinks the ear in his belly makes him crazy. Probably. 

Will is useful as a tool. This is something he’s known since childhood, trailing after his father from boatyard to boatyard, barefoot and smudged with dirt and grease- he is useful for fetching things like wrenches and oil, and he is good for telling the landlady as politely as he can (eyes fixed on his feet in a way that won’t be called surly and antisocial until he’s a little bit older) that “daddy’ll be down with rent soon, ma’am,” except daddy only has _most_ of the rent, but he’ll make it up soon, promise. Soften the blow with a little kid with too-big eyes and a too-big t-shirt.

Then he grew up. Still, he’s a useful if unpleasant asset. People don’t like him but people need him- they put up with the shell to get the brain. 

Okay. He’s tired of being useful. Really, he is. He’s tired of saving people and not being saved in return. Is that selfish? 

It’s selfish. Fine. 

Will is useful as a tool. Tools, he knows very well, can degrade. They can rust, or break, and then they’re no longer helpful. He can’t stand in front of himself and stare at his feet and say, lisping just a little, vowels dragging, that “Will’s gonna starve himself down to sticks, m’kay, and he’s gonna do it just to spite you, just so there’s nothing left for you to use,” because _that_ Will died a long time ago in Louisiana, and _this_ Will (he’s decided it all on his own) is going to die in every way that counts in a the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. 

-

In the past any space he’s taken up has felt obtrusive, in some way. Anything he’d taken. He grew up on an empty belly, and he knows how childhood can shape the mind. So. 

Perhaps, he muses, fingers splayed on the harpsichord of his ribs- perhaps this is an inevitable conclusion. Perhaps he is a cause and effect pamphlet in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, entirely predictable. It’s grating but probable- he borrows the cool clinicism of a psychiatrist, slips it on like scratchy gardening gloves. He finds something sacred in denying himself. Hannibal Lecter is a hedonist, so Will will be an ascetic. 

It’s deeper than that. When he was much younger, death seemed terribly, desperately romantic- when he’d pictured it, it was quiet. He’d like to give himself that. 

(Penance by starvation. He thinks of the meals Hannibal fed him, and how he’d enjoyed them. He is not an especially moral man. The guilt he feels is half manufactured, tempered by what he knows is the right thing to think- that makes him guiltier. 

Will has a good imagination. He lies on his little cot and melts himself away into the river. Perhaps he’ll teach Abigail to fish. He thinks she might like that.)

-

Matthew Brown shoves a feeding tube down his throat. He does it strangely, honorifically. Will asks him to kill Hannibal. So. 

He tries to remember a moment where his life was normal and the closest he can recall is handing his father wrenches while he worked on engines, solemn as anything. He sees it like a stranger, his dirty bare feet and the stiff clench of his jaw, even though he was hardly five- still. It was normal. 

See- 

No, wait. Rewind a bit. A lot. Twenty years. 

He grew up on an empty belly. 

-

When Will Graham was three years old, his mother died. He thinks. 

His father never liked to talk about her, which is his way. His father never liked to talk about anything. So he’s three years old, and his mother’s dead- which he doesn’t understand, of course- 

So he’s three years old, and his mother’s decided to leave him. Or something. 

And his father is a very quiet man. A stern, quiet man. He taught Will how to fish and how to fix boat engines. He taught him how to gut small animals. Will doesn’t think he liked him, much, but he accepted his lot in life without much complaint. Drank a lot of whiskey. It is what it is. 

He’s a weird kid. Will knows that, his father knows that, and the other kids at school definitely know that. They aren’t nice to him but then he’s not nice to them either, really. He breaks an older kid’s nose to see what would happen, and his teacher snaps in a quiet voice that he’s not supposed to hear that maybe this wouldn’t’ve happened if he had a _mother-_

He has a father, and his father is a very quiet man. They don’t have a lot of money. He takes him to get tested and the results are inconclusive but it’s what they can afford- he buys some diagnoses that mostly-fit. Empathy disorder, ASD, haphephobia. The doctor suggests sociopathy, schizophrenia, and his father is out of money, onto the next job, onto the next doctor. Eventually there’s no point in keeping at it, just like there’s no point in keeping all the names.

Some of them mostly-fit, though. And he hated the testing, the pointed questions, the poorly disguised boredom and pity in everyone’s faces. He puts them on like hand-me-down winter clothes. 

Anyway. When Will Graham was three years old- he finds this out maybe ten years later- when Will Graham was three years old his mother ran away (which is just the same as dying, when you’re thirteen and lonely and your belly aches all the time). He followed his father barefoot from trailer park to apartment to boatyard, and-

That’s about it, really. That’s his childhood. A little more testing, a cocktail of medications that never actually work, and this fucking relentless need to _prove himself_. He would’ve graduated valedictorian if it weren’t for all the absences. Went into forensics because something in him has always been drawn to the pink-red marble of fresh meat. 

He got through college by virtue of coffee, of course. Rail thin, bags under his eyes. God, he was unhappy. (Will thinks he was meant to be unhappy, though. A sort of chronically languid personality defect. He looks back on college almost fondly, remembering sleepless nights- at least he wasn’t hallucinating, right?)

-

Beverly Katz visits, and then Beverly Katz dies. They strap him to a ~~gurney~~ board so he can see her insides. 

A bit of a tangent: Will has problems with his neck. He clenches his jaw, holds his shoulders too stiff. Thirty five years of it. One of his wistful little ideas about death is that it won’t feel tense. Anyway. 

Beverly looks relaxed. Is that a bad thing to notice? She looks peaceful, at least. He tells that to Jack and Jack gets a look on his face that says “nothing in the world is going right for me, and is it my fault? Am I the common denominator?” It almost makes Will laugh, right by his dead sort-of-friend’s sliced up body. 

(He is not an especially moral man.)

-

Matthew Brown shoves a feeding tube down his throat. 

-

Matthew Brown shoves a feeding tube down his throat, and Will bites his fingers in a burst of blood red.

He’s in college. He weighs himself a lot, in college. Is that strange? There are some things he likes to keep track of. 

He is in college. One hundred and twenty pounds is eight-and-a-half stones, which he pictures balanced precariously on top of each other, ready to topple. His father taught him how to save money, that’s all. And when he’s thirty-five he’ll bite down and chew on a human liver, heart, tongue, lungs. Hindsight is 20/20.

-

Is it really penance? Or is he being selfish once more? The distinction doesn’t really matter, on the outside. It matters to him. 

It would’ve mattered to Hannibal, too. Of course. The hungry way he watched Will, eager for his conflict and fear and anything else he gave away so fucking freely. ( _Hungry_.)

(Will finds himself missing him. Somehow.)

(No one’s ever looked at him like he’s worth so much. It is- was (is) intoxicating, in an uncomfortable way; going just a little too close to the edge, knowing that the rocks at the bottom will shred you (but god, won’t that feel nice?).)

He carves himself like a Christmas ham. He does it for himself. (Who is he kidding?)

Oh, but they’re closing the net- 

-

Will is swallowed whole in his empty house- 

They’re closing the net. (How does Jack feel about all this? He’s impatient, of course, but willing to forgive Will his quirks. As always. He’s always been only half there, after all.)

Hannibal invites him for dinner, or he invites himself. 

Hannibal touches the bird-fragile bones of his wrist with all the reverence of a desecrated altar, and there is this look in his eyes- and Will has won, he knows that- oh, they both know that. His teeth ache with the victory, sweet as pralines, lemonade, sun brewed iced tea- and Hannibal touches the bird-fragile bones in his wrist, and he’s always been the only one who sees him. Always, always. 

(If Will’s honest with himself, he was always going to call.)

**Author's Note:**

> my internal monologue "if you post this at 10 am its not going to get any views" me "its not going to get any views anyway and also i want to go to bed" my internal monologue "well consider that i am in chargeof the body" me "ok i will not post this at 10 am and thats my personal choice that i made by myself"
> 
> s2 thru a sort of fucky semi self projecty lens. anyways i think im going to do s3 in the series and then im going to do a haunted house au for obvious and clear reasons
> 
> if u liked this please leave a comment/send me an ask @ redjewelsforeyes.tumblr.com


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